April 23, 2001

Timeship will be a six-acre, $180 million “Noah’s Ark” for 10,000 people and plants and animals, as well as stem cells of near-extinct species and human organs for transplant.

The project’s architect, Stephen Valentine, was commissioned by life-extension groups, including the Stasis Foundation. He hopes to break ground by 2002, with systems for energy self-reliance in a secure facility located possibly in the American Southwest or Florida.

April 19, 2001

A Rand Corporation “foresight” report on “The Global Technology Revolution: Bio/Nano/Materials Trends and Their Synergies with Information Technology by 2015″ examines the potential effects of several technological trends over the next 15 years, influenced by advances in biotechnology, nanotechnology, materials technology, and information technology.

April 18, 2001

“Smart” methods of delivering drugs to the body—-based on micro- and nanotechnology—-could reduce side effects, make better use of existing drugs and open the door to entire classes of new treatments.

For example, Tejal Desai, assistant professor of bioengineering at the University of Illinois at Chicago and iMedd of Ohio are building 150-microns-wide silicon particles. On one side, up to 20 drug-containing reservoirs are etched, each sealed with a… read more

April 18, 2001

Purdue University researchers are using the same principle that makes DNA strands link together to create tiny structures that may someday be used to develop nanostructures with specific dimensions and chemical properties.

“We have perfect control over every part of the system,” says Hicham Fenniri, an assistant professor of chemistry who directed the effort. “We not only dictate how the molecule behaves, but we also can control… read more

April 13, 2001

With the rise of personalized Internet news, the democratizing effects of streets and general interest publications are at risk of being overwhelmed by passive consumers who live in Internet-filtered information cocoons, says Cass R. Sunstein, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School in Republic.com, a new book.

April 13, 2001

Integrated circuits made from polymers could usher in a whole new era in computing.

The idea: plastic circuits could be manufactured simply by spraying them out of ink-jet printers, ushering in an era of lightweight, ultracheap, and flexible computer displays and electronics. “Imagine a large sheet of plastic that could download your favorite newspapers and that you could roll up underneath your arm.”

April 13, 2001

President Bush has requested $485 million for nanotechnology research in fiscal year 2002. If approved by Congress, it will fund research in areas from pollution control to biotechnology to space travel.

This month, the National Science Foundation will publish a 400-page report predicting that in ten to fifteen years, the entire semiconductor industry, as well as half the pharmaceutical industry, will rely on nanotechnology.

April 12, 2001

Intel cofounder Gordon Moore, who coined Moore’s Law (the number of transistors that can be packed into an integrated circuit will double every year), believes this doubling will slow down sometime between 2010 and 2020. He doesn’t see a solution in the works.

In the meantime, what should we do with this increased power? “The one capability that to me will make a qualitative difference in how we do… read more

April 12, 2001

Politicians and regulators in America are floundering as they try to understand the immense implications of genetic science.

The first human clone could mark a turning-point in humanity’s story, joining genetically modified plants, gene patents, in-vitro fertilization, stem-cell research, and eugenics in prompting a whole series of perplexing ethical questions that will affect politics everywhere.

April 11, 2001

LIVERMORE, Calif. — Industry and government officials today announced completion of the first full-scale prototype machine for making computer chips using extreme ultraviolet (EUV) light, a breakthrough that will lead to microprocessors that are tens of times faster than today’s most powerful chips and create memory chips with similar increases in storage capacity.

Lithography technology should allow for circuits as small as 0.03 microns, extending the current pace of… read more

April 10, 2001

RAEL, founder of Clonaid, the first human cloning company, and self-described “Messenger of Infinity” and “brother of Jesus,” announced today he has given his support to Professor Robert White of Cleveland, Ohio, who hopes to perform brain and human head transplants.

White recently announced he has transplanted a whole monkey’s head onto another monkey’s body. The animal survived for some time after the operation.

April 9, 2001

On Tuesday, KurzweilAI.net senior researcher Lucas Hendrich will explain at a Boston seminar how XML technologies are used for “innovative presentation of content and a streamlined publishing process.”

XML is used on KurzweilAI.net to generate a knowledge base of “thoughts” (people, places and things), which are highlighted in content and displayed in TheBrain knowledge visualization tool and by the Ramona conversational avatar.